


No Regrets

by GillianInOz



Series: Sweet Work [2]
Category: Lewis - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 13:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12277488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GillianInOz/pseuds/GillianInOz
Summary: Robbie Lewis was tired of regrets, and he didn't want to add another to his long list. This is the morning after the night before.





	No Regrets

James squinted against the morning light slanting across his face. His mouth felt thick and cottony, and his head felt tender, as if the whole of his scalp was one big bruise.

“Oh, Christ,” someone said next to him, and James’s eyes flew open. “Jesus sodding Christ,” the voice moaned, and James simultaneously realised it was Lewis’s voice, remembered that Lewis was in bed with him, and recalled that he’d spent most of the night before engaging in prurient sexual acts with Lewis.

Slowly James turned his head on the pillow and looked at Lewis, who was sitting on the side of the bed, completely naked, cradling his head in his hands.

Most. Awkward. Awakening. Ever.

“I can’t believe we did that,” Lewis was moaning, and instantly awkward turned to horror. It was one thing not to know what to say to your boss the next morning when he’d spent so much time literally worshipping your cock the night before. But it was a completely different matter to have your boss sounding so… mortified to wake up in bed with you.

“Sir,” he said, and winced at his own inanity. 

“James,” Lewis whimpered. “Tell me we didn’t do that.”

James swallowed hard. “I can’t, Robbie,” he said thickly. “I’m sorry.”

Lewis remained slumped, his back to James, his posture defeated. “Please tell me we didn’t gatecrash a potential crime scene last night while drunk,” he moaned.

James froze. What?

Lewis dragged his hand down his face. “An Oxford don,” he said incredulously. “We stood on the doorstep of an Oxford don, while off our faces, and made sarcastic comments about his specialist field.”

“Well, to be fair, Robbie,” James said, mind racing. “I’m the one who made the sarcastic comments about his specialist field. Is that really what you’re regretting this morning?” he asked incredulously.

Lewis looked at him over the shoulder with a wince. “No,” he said baldly. “I’m also regretting that half a bottle of scotch we consumed once we got back here. What were we thinking? Mixing drinks like that?”

James sat up, flinching as the sunlight hit his sensitive eyes.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time?” he ventured, still feeling his way. At least he wasn’t feeling awkward any more. Just completely and utterly confused.

“Christ,” Lewis moaned. “There are two hamsters mating in my head.” He turned a soulful gaze on James. “And one of them doesn’t want to.”

James couldn’t help it, he snorted out a laugh and collapsed back on the pillow, instantly regretting it as a shooting pain splintered his skull. 

“Oy,” Robbie, said, gingerly laying back down with a wince. “Don’t mock the afflicted. How come you’re not hungover? The power of prayer?”

“Oh, I’m hungover,” James confirmed. “I just thought you were regretting last night, that’s all, and I had no idea how I was going to handle it. I’ve gone from feeling like crap with an unexploded bomb in the room, back to just feeling like crap.”

“That’s the only regret I don’t have,” Lewis said, stretching out his limbs with a pained moan. “The sex. That was bloody amazing.” He turned his head on the pillow and squinted at James. “How about you?”

James frowned. “I haven’t had time to think about it.” His bladder started signalling him and he sat up with a groan. “I have to piss,” he said. 

“I need water,” Lewis said. “Water, paracetamol and coffee, in that order.”

“All three are available in the kitchen,” James advised, and shut the bathroom door behind him. After the necessary peeing he washed his hands and splashed water on his face. At some point last night he’d removed his contacts, thank god, and right now the world was comfortingly blurry. He stared at his fuzzy image in the mirror. His boss was naked in his bed. The bed that currently reeked of sex and needed a serious change of bedding if it was ever to be slept on again.

Memories assailed him. Sex. Laughter. More sex. Drinking. More laughter. Sexual escapades were few and far between for James, he was famous for it in his small circle of friends. But sex and laughter together was unheard of. Sex had always been a serious business for James, deliberately so. He wasn’t the smug little seminarian he’d once been, so quick to judge others, sinning in pride over his own choices.

But he was still of the firm belief that real intimacy was a serious business, needing careful thought and real, genuine feelings backing it up.

It was not – very firmly not – something to be engaged in because someone invited you for a quick snog in the bushes.

888

“Oh, that’s better,” Lewis said after his first gulp of coffee. 

James sat down at the small table and sipped his own brew. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Nothing two weeks by the seaside wouldn’t cure,” Lewis said, swallowing down the paracetamol and washing them down with water. He queried a brow at James. “How are you?”

“I’ve had worse,” James said. “But I was much younger then.”

Lewis chuckled. “Because you’re so ancient now. I mean, are you all right about last night? Us? Breaking a few rules?”

“Rule one being rumpy pumpy with your boss?” 

“Aye, that’d be the one.”

“I don’t have any problems with it, per se,” James said honestly. “It’s just rather out of character for me. For both of us.”

Lewis lifted one brow. “Think you know me well enough to know what’s out of character for me?” he asked, but there was no sharpness or unkindness in his tone, just curiosity.

“I thought I did. I mean…” James toyed with his coffee cup. “Have you really been, um, attracted to me for weeks?”

Lewis considered this. “I suppose I have. It sort of crept up on me.”

“You hid it well.”

“You think? And here I was thinking I’d been flirting with you all this time. Shows how rusty I am at the whole thing.”

James almost choked on his coffee. “Flirting?”

Lewis shrugged. “I was trying to get it out of my system,” he said. “Thought it was just some silly phase brought on by being alone too long, and finally getting close to someone. Figured it’d wear off.” He shook his head, quirking a rueful smile. “And then last night I looked at you, your lips wrapped around the mouth of that bottle, and I just thought… Bugger it.”

Not for the first time James cursed his fair skin, he literally felt the tide of pink creeping up his neck as he blushed. 

Lewis grinned. “And a pretty blush like that doesn’t help keep my prurient thoughts under control,” he said, mock severely.

James wrapped both hands around his mug and buried his red face in his coffee cup.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” Lewis said gently. “I don’t mean to embarrass you.” He shrugged. “But you did ask.”

“We’ve known each other for nearly a year though,” James protested. “Why last night? Why did you suddenly think, er, bugger it?”

Lewis waved a hand. “Oh, you can’t count those first few months,” he said, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Honestly, it’s a wonder you ever asked to work with me, grumpy sod that I was.”

“I admired your skill as a detective,” James said honestly. “I appreciated that you took my opinion seriously. And I could see you were still grieving for your wife.”

Lewis smiled at him wryly. “Could hardly miss it,” he said. “Coming back to Oxford, so many memories, well, it was hard, I won’t deny it. Seemed I couldn’t take a walk without seeing some place I’d been with Val, or the kids, or Morse.” He shook his head. “But even the deepest grief fades. Eventually.” He quirked a brow at James. “You know what doesn’t fade?” 

James shook his head.

“Regrets,” Lewis said. “I’ve a lifetime full of them.”

James clenched his jaw, looking away and seeing in his mind’s eye the shattered face of his best friend in the world. “I suppose we all have those,” he said evenly.

He looked down in surprise as Lewis patted his hand consolingly. “Aye,” he said. “I suppose we do.”

They sipped their coffee reflectively for a few minutes. 

“Well, anyway,” Lewis said briskly. “After I started settling in a bit, and feeling a bit more like my old self. There you were. You helped, you know?”

“Me?” James blinked in surprise. “How?”

“All sorts of ways. By being a good copper. A great bagman. A sounding board. A mate, as much as we can be with you junior to my senior.”

James frowned thoughtfully. “Still not sure how we got from there to blowjobs though.”

Lewis chuckled. “Well, if you remember correctly my invitation was just for a snog. Can’t help it if you’re sex on long legs and just completely seduced me, can I?”

James blushed again, flattered. He’d been described as lots of things, but never, to his recollection, sex on legs.

“Safe to say the snog exceeded my expectations, and I couldn’t resist taking it to the next level. That’s where the ‘bugger it’ component came in. I sat there on that swing, and in about thirty seconds every reason why non fraternisation rules are a good thing ran through my head like a parade. And then I just thought - bugger it. I didn’t want to add that regret to my long list.”

“What regret?” James asked, and he held his breath, somehow knowing that this was important. 

“Not kissing a beautiful man in the moonlight,” Lewis murmured. “Not kissing you.”

“Oh,” James managed, his heart beating oddly in his chest.

“So now it’s up to you,” Lewis said. “It’s entirely up to you. Do you want to do it again?”

Did he? James looked at Lewis sitting there rumpled in last night’s suit. He was slumped over his coffee, his skin was pale, his face haggard, bags under his bloodshot eyes. He was certainly showing his age in the unforgiving morning sunlight. 

But James was seeing that twinkle in his eye last night as he’d thrown caution to the winds and propositioned his sergeant. He was feeling those hands sliding under his shirt and stroking his shivering bare skin. He was remembering last night after the second blow job, Robbie stroking his stomach as he trembled, softly kissing his shoulder, his neck, the corner of his mouth. 

And James remembered what Robbie had said about regret, and how James had once been a coward and a fool, and how he’d regretted it so much he’d shaped his entire life around it. He was so tired of regret.

“Yes,” he said. “I would.”

Robbie smiled at him, and suddenly he didn’t look old and tired. He was a man in his prime, strong shoulders, gentle hands, kind eyes. Mind like a steel trap when it suited him. He was Inspector Robbie Lewis, he was who James was starting to think he wanted to be when he grew up. He was James’s lover of the night before and he would be again.

And James could hardly wait.


End file.
